Mother remembers how polio nearly killed three of her children

For seven hours on an October night more than a half century ago, a team of doctors and nurses battled to save 5-year-old Bobby Sleczkowski's life.

Kathy Uek

For seven hours on an October night more than a half century ago, a team of doctors and nurses battled to save 5-year-old Bobby Sleczkowski's life.

Bobby suffered from poliomyelitis. With no iron lungs available at Framingham Union Hospital, the medical team kept him alive by compressing warm towels to his chest from 6 p.m. that night until 1 a.m. the following morning.

Patients suffering from extreme cases of polio continue breathing with the aid of an iron lung.

"But when my husband arrived at the hospital with Bobby, all the iron lungs were filled with patients," said Nancy. Her husband has since died and she is now married to Bill Hogan.

"There was no medication and no iron lungs," said Nancy, speaking just before the 54th anniversary of the introduction of the Salk vaccine, which would eliminate the scourge of polio in the United States. "There was nothing I could do to help, so I prayed."

"When Bobby's fever broke seven hours after applying the compresses, Bobby pushed them away," said his mother, wiping away tears as she remembered his recovery. "He was just letting them know he didn't need them anymore. He walked around the crib and was talking."

Within four days, Framingham's Dr. Theodore Golden diagnosed Bobby and his two sisters, 3-year-old Karen and 15-month-old Diane, with polio. The two girls suffered from a mild form of non-paralytic polio.

Bobby suffered from bulbar polio, which meant the virus invaded his brainstem, paralyzing muscles needed for breathing, swallowing and other crucial functions. Bobby could neither breathe normally nor talk. The left side of his body was paralyzed, and his temperature rose to more than 104 degrees.

Six months before - on April 12, 1955 - with medical trials complete, Dr. Jonas Salk deemed his polio vaccine safe, and doctors and nurses nationally began immunizing thousands of children, said Michelle Kling, spokeswoman for the March of Dimes' national office in White Plains, N.Y.

"But a batch of the polio vaccine made by (California-based) Cutter Laboratories that year contained live vaccine and it had to be withdrawn, which caused a shortage," said Kling.

That shortage almost robbed Bobby of his life.

By 1955, with the introduction of the vaccine, the number of cases dropped considerably to 29,000, from a high of almost 58,000 in 1952.

Poliomyelitis, once called infantile paralysis, used to strike thousands of children in the United States annually. It is a disease that can infect the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and cause lasting disabilities in some cases, according to the March of Dimes.

By 1960, the number of cases declined to 3,190 cases nationally with 230 deaths, and today polio has been eliminated in this country.

It is caused by any of three types of polio viruses. Polio infection is most common in infants and children, but young adults and some older people can get it, too. Mild cases include symptoms such as a sore throat, headache, upset stomach and low-grade fever.

Several hours after Bobby's fever broke, Dr. Golden returned to their Guadalcanal Road apartment in Framingham to check on his 4-year-old sister, Maureen, suffering from a fever. After he examined her, Maureen asked: "Is it my turn to the go to the hospital?"

"I had been praying over and over, and my body was shaking with fear when he told me, 'Maureen was OK,"' said their mom.

During the children's hospitalizations, their mother went to the same hospital to give birth to her sixth child, Joseph.

"Because of polio epidemic, I only held him once," Nancy remembered.

With Karen in insolation, doctors put her mother in the same ward two doors down. Joseph stayed in a small room by himself.

"I begged (the late) Dr. (John) Burke of Framingham, who delivered Joseph, to let me go home," said Nancy. "I felt so useless. I couldn't see anyone. I wanted to be with my two other children at home. I could hear my babies and they wouldn't let me go to them. I don't know how I stayed in that room."

Finally, everyone went home. The girls returned home after a week in the hospital and Bobby went home with a slight limp after nine days. Three times a day for one month, Nancy exercised Bobby's legs.

"I pushed on his legs and he pulled," she said. "Everyone got better. I'm so grateful they all came out of it so well. My prayers were answered."

Karen lives in Florida and Diane in Oregon. Bobby died three years ago, of an illness unrelated to polio.

In 1962, Dr. Albert Sabin introduced his oral vaccine, which came to replace the injectable version in the U.S. for almost 30 years. Then in the 1990s, the Center for Disease Control Prevention recommended returning to the injectable vaccine because of patients with compromised immune systems.

Even with the elimination of polio from the Western Hemisphere, Jerry Wortzman, chief of pediatrics at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, said it has not been eradicated worldwide. He recommends everyone be immunized.

In the first six months of a child's life, they receive the primary series of three shots, followed by a booster at age 4. Then they are considered covered for life, he said.

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